How To Write A Consultant CV ? Episode 4 – Last Minute Checks

Let’s review last minute checks which are very expensive to candidates who do not takes to do to them. Anthology…

The Respect Of The Alignement Between The CV’s Rows And Columns

Everything has to be meticulously displayed in your document. You can even organize the document by hand if the Word page layout causes you any problems. Obviously don’t keep your finalized document in the Word format. I recommend you to only submit your file to the consulting firms in the PDF format. Here, the fact of choosing a sober style will certainly help you to naturally dispose of aligned rows and columns in your document. I just corrected the CV of a Business school candidate before sending it to Bain. Her CV had a different hierarchy structure according to the section: for example in “Academic Background” section, the level of the first bullet point to describe her diplomas was not aligned with the one describing the “Professional Experience” section. This is a classical mistake to avoid…

The Consistency Of The Style Throughout Your Consultant CV

For example, if you use the Arial 12 Italic font to specify the dates of your internships, it is obviously necessary to retain this style for all dates in the CV. Another example: if you described your first internship with a sentence like “I was in charge of …” it would be inconsistent to start the description of your second job by a “Responsible for..” it is about a syntax consistency between your information at the same level.

This rule is essential in consulting, and is respected by consultants in their own work documents. This way, a candidate who will not respect this rule will be automatically seen as “disconnected” from the classic standards of the consulting sector. No respect of this rule is not elimanatory, but better to start well, right?

Misspellings, Especially Accents And Punctuation

You cannot imagine the number of remaining typos in the “final” versions of CVs sent to Human Resources departments…this results in the evolving nature of a CV whose successive modifications complicate proofreading. So be very vigilant in this regard given the level of competition. From experience, almost one definitive CV out of three fails in this quirk.

Updating Your Contact Information

Very silly, but do you still have the same phone number and the same email address you had at the beginning of writing your resume? About that, be sure to put only your personal, non-professional and temporary contact information. The personal information is the only one that lasts over time, with those of alumni networks, sometimes.

The Consistency Between The Dates Of Your Document

A critical review is needed to not be troubled on D-Day. To my mind, this is the only real risk that may arise on the day of an interview because of a CV. When I was in the acceptance jury of a given Business school, a candidate was completely confused when I asked for clarification about a 3-year gap in her CV. It is essential to ensure your CV covers all periods of your background, and in the case of a mishape, which is always possible for everyone, focus on preparing your explanation speech for your interview.